IAMX concert fail

I joined this kickass website, Songkick (dot com) a few months ago and tagged every artist I’ve ever liked in it. About a month ago, a triple-header of concerts showed up in Köln that I lamented not being able to see: Adele, IAMX, Lykke Li.

I’d already seen Lykke in 2008, so wasn’t too pressed about missing her, but I have yet to see Adele or IAMX live. My initial thought was to get a hotel room, take a few vacation days, and hang in Köln for a few days/nights to see all three shows. Then I thought ‘Oh crap. Money, Japan, Belgium. That’s a no-go’ and decided that the best solution would be to see just IAMX when they came closer to me, in Frankfurt, last night.

I got in touch with René who was still in Philly at the time and asked if he thought he’d be staying in Germany after the Belgium seminar, and if I should get him a ticket also. He said that he still wasn’t sure, but that if he was home we could just get him a ticket after Belgium. Ok, no problem…

The Frankfurt concert turned out to be sold out. Of course. Because I only bought one ticket. So we drove to Frankfurt last night with the idea to just buy an extra ticket from someone who was selling theirs (btw, did you know it’s illegal here to ask more than the original price for a ticket? I love this country). It turned out that only ONE person was selling their ticket, and we missed it by like 5 seconds. Shit.

René was totally cool and told me to just go inside and watch the show, that he’d find something to do for a few hours. But earlier, he’d expressed that he was excited to go to the concert. So, I wasn’t about to just roll inside and enjoy myself (and yes, I would have) while he hung out in a city that he thoroughly dislikes.

Instead, I said, ‘let’s sell my ticket and go get dinner’. And he was like, ‘really?’ and I was like, ‘yeah. They’re still touring, maybe we can see them somewhere else’. So we sold my ticket to some group that just needed one more, and went to have some AMAZING sushi instead.

It turns out, as we checked the website later, that last night was the last Germany show for them, and they’ll be in Spain and Greece next. So we won’t be able to see them this time.

I’m ok with this, because for me IAMX is a ‘second-tier’ band. Like Baltimore or Philadelphia is a second-tier city. My ‘top-tier’ bands are the ones I’d have gone inside for: Portishead, Massive Attack, Florence and the Macine, Esthero. But for IAMX, I can wait til they tour again.

We made a deal though, that WHEREVER Portishead is playing this summer (and I am most certain they’ll be touring), that we go to see them. So I effectively traded IAMX for Portishead last night, and I’m ok with that. I’d love to see IAMX live, but I’d rather see them WITH René, who wanted to see them, too.

I’m ok with going to concerts alone, I’ve done it plenty of times, but when someone wants to go with you and is standing in front of the door and can’t, I think it’s bad relationship juju and bad form in general to be like ‘ok, I’m going in, see you later’, regardless of whether that person’s a lover or a friend.